Kael didn’t care for the rules. He was a Scavenger, and today, he had found something the Overseers had spent centuries trying to delete.

Kael had two choices: surrender the slate and live his life in the dark, or run toward the Ventilation Shaft—a vertical climb that led to the "Dead Surface."

"If you are reading this," she whispered, her voice echoing through the silent corridor, "then the Great Shield has failed, and the sun is no longer your enemy. We didn't leave you because we wanted to. We left you because we had to hide the seeds."

For three hundred years, his people had lived in "The Hive," a subterranean labyrinth built by the "Ancients" before the surface became a scorched graveyard of radiation and glass. They were told the world above was dead. They were told the Archives were forbidden.

Kael froze. The "seeds" weren't plants—they were coordinates.

"Not today," he muttered, tucking the slate into his chest plate.

As his grease-stained fingers swiped the surface, a holographic interface flickered to life. A woman appeared, her clothes strange and vibrant—colors Kael didn't have names for.

Suddenly, the heavy blast doors at the end of the hall groaned. The heavy thud of Overseer boots rang out, rhythmic and cold. They knew. The Hive’s internal sensors had flagged the unauthorized power draw from the ancient device.